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23/01/2011

A spaniard making infographics in China

Xan Sabaríswas until last year the head (and only member) at the infographics department of Diario de Pontevedra, a local newspaper in the northwest of Spain. He had worked previously for another newspapers of the Vocento group (which owns ABC, El Correo and others) and La Voz de Galicia. He was publishing really good stuff in Pontevedra. But in 2010 he was hired by a chinese neswspaper, China Daily , based in Beijing and where Bill Gaspard, former SND president, was the Art Director. These are some of his works there.

I asked him a little text explaining is work in a chinese newspaper, how is working in such a different culture and way of working. And these are his words:

"Apart from me, there are three chinese guys in the department. Thay make graphics, but also layouts pf the pages.

Maybe the best word to explain how is working here is 'rough'.I don't speak or read chinese (but in the newspaper people speak english), and the rythm of work here is very different form the spanish one, at least where I've worked before. We can say China is quiet..."

"The biggest problem is the lack of information. When you need to go further you need speak, most times, with sources abroad.An advantage is that people is open to new ideas and they take risks. Few newspapers in Spain (maybe none) would risk, not being a special event, to use one of the firsts pages of the newspaper for a big infographic (the one about the skyscrapers)."

I don't remember what was the information about. It was an evolution, year by year, of something. But in all years the values were around 50, and then, one year, it grows to 100, and then the next year comes back to 50.

Me: "What happened here?"

Writer: "Ummm… Dont' know. Doesn't matter, that's not the story".

Here you have some works by Xan and his team. Congratulations to him and all his team.